Stupidity And Social Media
by Miki Saxon
Reputations are fragile things and company reputations are no different, but in the brave new world of YouTube, Twitter and blogs their fragility has skyrocketed.
Pity Domino’s Pizza whose Conover NC franchise employed two of the stupidest thirty-somethings available. They posted a prank video on YouTube (it’s been removed) that burned through the social media world faster than any recorded wildfire and was just as damaging.
In a 2007 post I quoted Chris Gidez, head of U.S. crisis management for the public-relations firm Hill & Knowlton, “Once it’s on the Web, it’s like taking the rods out of a reactor. Companies have to work harder to determine, ‘Do we need to worry about this?’ “Overreacting can call more attention to a rumor than it gets on its own, I’ve had clients who wanted to respond to a problem with guns blazing, and I say, ‘Hold on a second. You might be telling a larger universe of people about a problem they didn’t know existed.”
I think that Gidez may be giving different advice these days, since it’s doubtful that any rumor, prank or sin will die a natural death.
“If you think it’s not going to spread [in social media], that’s when it gets bigger,” said Scott Hoffman, the chief marketing officer of the social-media marketing firm Lotame. “We realized that when many of the comments and questions in Twitter were, ‘What is Domino’s doing about it’ ” Domino’s spokesman, Tim McIntyre said. “Well, we were doing and saying things, but they weren’t being covered in Twitter.”
By Wednesday afternoon, Domino’s had created a Twitter account, @dpzinfo, to address the comments, and it had presented its chief executive in a video on YouTube by evening.”
The real problem today isn’t the speed and transparency with which information moves, but rather it’s that the stupidity factor is just as bad, if not worse, than it ever was.
Dr. Jay Geidd, NIH: “The part of the brain that fills in last is the part involved in decision-making and controlling our impulses.”
The articles on teen brain research all indicate that the brain matures around age 25 or later, but it seems the availability of instant fame, no matter how fleeting, has pushed brain maturity way past that mark increasing the level of stupidity that people find so amusing—think YouTube and AFHV.
This weekend talk to your kids. Show them the article; tell them about the legal charges filed and the civil suite in the works. And ask them what business in it’s right mind would ever hire people whose judgment is this bad?
Image credit: John Karakatsanis on flickr
April 17th, 2009 at 7:18 am
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